The Sun Came Up

Gloria Steinem characterized this election as “a referendum on the future, but the future is coming anyway”. Kat and I gave up in despair and went to bed around 1:00 a.m. hoping to sleep about four years. Wednesday broke clear and our roses were still in bloom. With our first frost forecast tonight I’ll harvest the last crop today, and we will attempt to get on with our lives. Congratulations to you who backed Trump – I sincerely hope that you are correct about him and I am way off base. Still, I have questions for you that echo Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule.

Childe Hassam’s July 4th

Can our first President without either government or military experience improve American life by making it more exclusive and less economically and politically equitable? Can we become greater by being less America the melting pot and more Fortress USA?

Will he improve our decent and steadily growing economy, or promptly steer it back into recession? How can jobs that went overseas be lured back?

Will a developer surrounded by a cabinet of businessmen and career politicians wisely run this government? W’s eight years were a disaster, but his track record did include running a couple of small businesses into bankruptcy. Oops, almost forgot – Trump has bankrupted some bigger ones.

How can even a unified Republican front possibly replace Obamacare? If the poor and middle class cannot now afford subsidized health insurance, how can they afford coverage with nothing more than Health Savings Accounts? What will become of those facets of the ACA that everyone (except insurers) likes, such as non-discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, and free preventive care?

Will he lock her up? Will he build that wall using other people’s pesos? Does he have any plan for defeating ISIL? Will we ever see his tax returns? Will his Attorney General find a way to quash the Trump University fraud lawsuits?

Trump has promised vast tax cuts for business and the top tenth of one percent of individuals. Will his GOP Senate, currently so concerned about budget deficits, suddenly like them and change their tune to Cheney’s proverb “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”?

Will the immense power and responsibilities of the Presidency somehow modulate this man’s anger? Is there any way he can transform his toxic persona, innate cruelty, and penchant for sexual harassment into something resembling a role model for our young? Can the world survive four years with nuclear war only a tweet and a phone call away?

He doesn’t have to make America Great Again. Others have already done that. Suppose Trump fails to deliver on his boasts even with the help of an enabling Congress and a Supreme Court packed to his advantage? If he fails miserably are you who elected this man open to removing him in 2020?

Therein lies the then and now difference between Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule: after breaking Iraq, Bush owned it. If Trump’s election breaks our government, we all have to fix it. There just aren’t enough Hillary voters for us to do it alone. You are going to have to help.

(Before I proceed, this comment turned out quite long, and so if that is not okay, then please delete it/don’t okay it. 🙂 )

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I had the same idea about a long nap, as I’m sure is the case with many mourning the results.

Something has been broken a very long time, and if this is not an enormous wake-up call then there isn’t one.

As for Trump changing, I’m thinking no. He will have to abide by certain rules and constraints of the Oval Office, and he is not going to like it, but it likely won’t fundamentally change him. Not this guy.

If he proves me wrong, that would be great.

In his campaign, he never gave any concrete plans for his promises. Now, he has to figure out how, if at all, to put them into play.

Of course, he can always come out again with the noise of the blowhard about how his hands were tired, and so on, if he fails at this.

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My concern is that the focus of the first year or so will be about how to control him, and about how to get rid of him.

While I would love to see him go—and chances are he will do something that forces him out—it would better serve us to figure out how to repair the damage he has done, and the obvious problems his campaign brought well into the scorching daylight.

With or without Trump in office, the problems that have been yanked further out into the open in this election are not going to go away on their own.

Also, if Trump is somehow impeached, we would still be left with Pence.

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It would be easy to descend into a pit of despair, and stay there, but that would only make things worse.

Each person can make a difference at the smallest level, and as you say, we must hang in there.

On a larger scale, and evidenced by the 60 million plus votes for Trump, I’d say improving our education system is a good place to start.

His salesmanship elected him and alas, all Americans know that most of what those guys promise is a load of hooey. But it seems we prefer to be offered a load of hooey to some achievable degree of civic and national improvement.

Should we have lived during the glory days of ancient Greece or Rome? (Be careful: most who did were slaves!)

The olden days are not for me. Anti-biotics, and modern surgery with anesthetics break the tie.